In the post-apocalypse, 24-year-old Joel Dawson (Dylan O’Brien) lives in an underground bunker with fellow survivors after an asteroid hit Earth 7 years ago. The chemicals from the missiles that struck the asteroid fell down to Earth and caused cold-blooded animals to mutate into giant creatures. His parents died, but his girlfriend, Aimee (Jessica Henwick), survived and got separated from him. He decides to travel 85 miles to visit her colony and reunite with her. Along the way, a dog he names Boy joins him and he meets a father and daughter team, Clyde (Michael Rooker) and Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt), who teach him essential fighting skills to help him defeat the giant creatures.

      Love and Monsters is a rousing sci-fi adventure with just the right balance of comedy, action and drama. The screenplay by Brian Duffield and Matthew Robinson could have easily turned the movie into a mind-numbing, tedious, action-packed video game, but instead they infuse it with a heartfelt love story and a protagonist who goes through innate struggles like the death of his parents. He pines for his girlfriend whom he briefly communicates via radio which motivates him to keep going. He develops a poignant friendship with the dog, Boy, that saves his life from a giant killer frog. The scenes with Cylde and Minnow are among the best ones in the movie because of their amusing, funny banter and the compassion that Clyde displays thoward Joel when they sit down by a campfire to talk about Joel's past. It's a moment that serves as exposition, but also, more importantly, as a catharsis for Joel because he gets to express his buried feelings and talk about his trauma. Cylde is like a surrogate father to him, so it's too bad that they don't meet again or keep in touch. There's also a moving scene with an injured Robot that Joel finds in an abandoned home. Once Joel arrives at Aimee's colony, Love and Monsters takes an unexpected turn that adds yet another layer of complexity and depth while maintaining suspense. Pay close attention to the details in the first hour because they'll become important later on.

      On a visceral, aesthetical level, Love and Monsters is exciting and even a bit scary, especially if you're not a huge fan of bugs. Fortunately, the filmmakers do not include spiders as one of mutated creatures---that would've been too scary like in the giant spiders in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The CGI looks impressive and the action feels thrilling without becoming exhausting. There are just enough quiet moments to allow the movie and the audience to breathe a little. Moreover, kudos to the casting directors for choosing Dylan O'Brien as Joel because he has the acting chops to handle both the physical and emotional aspects of his role convincingly. He's a great actor much like Hailee Steinfeld was in the surprisingly entertaining and moving blockbuster Bumblebee. As Francois Truffaut once wisely noted, a great film should have a perfect balance between Truth and Spectacle. Love and Monsters has plenty of Spectacle and offers just enough Truth to be a very satisfying and rewarding action adventure that will hopefully have sequels.

      Martin Eden (Luca Marinelli), a sailor from the lower class of society, flirts with a waitress, Margherita (Denise Sardisco) before meeting and falling in love with Elena (Jessica Cressy), a woman from a wealthy family. She's cultured and educated; he's uneducated and not very cultured either. Elena ignites a spark inside him when she bluntly states that he should continue his education. He pursues his passion for writing and educates himself by reading book after book while writing letters to her. Success doesn't come right away to him, but when it does, he becomes mentally unstable. A fellow writer, Russ Brissenden (Carlo Cecchi), serves as his mentor who guides him along the way with his insights. Martin's hot temper and mental instability leads to a rift between him and Elena which comes to a breaking point during a dinner with her family.

      Martin Eden begins as an emotionally engrossing, captivating love story, but becomes less emotionally engrossing during the weak second half. The screenplay by writer/director Pietro Marcello and co-writer Maurizio Braucci, based on the novel by Jack London, does a great job of getting inside the mind of Martin Eden as he courts Elena and struggles to get his writings published. His impoverished life juxtaposed with his new taste of the upper class life makes for a very provocative plot at least for the first hour. Elena and Martin are polar opposites not only because of their position in the class system of society, but also in their personality. He's arrogant, confident and very outspoken while she seems more shy, graceful and polite. It's during the flash forward to Martin's later years of success when then film because less and less moving as Martin becomes a bit crazy in his behavior and alienates the people around him. He becomes emotionally distant from other characters as well as the audience on top of that. There's not nearly enough nuance during those scenes as it becomes increasingly obvious that Martin's behavior is toxic and, worst of all, self-destructive. He's an interesting character whose downfall deserves to be explored with much more emotional and intellectual depth. Moreover, the flashbacks to Martin's impoverished childhood are handled in a clunky, lazy way that distracts from the narrative momentum.

      On a positive note, Luza Marinelli gives an emotionally resonant performance and tries his best to rise above the less powerful second half of the film. Jessica Cressy is also superb as Elena, very well cast and alluring. The cinematography along with the scenery add plenty of style and eye-candy. The same can be said for the costume design and the well-chosen use of music. All of those elements come together to try to make the film feel sweeping and cinematic, but they're undermined by a screenplay that takes a nosedive once it goes into darker territory and introduces Martin's complexities to the audience in a superficial way. At a running time of 2 hours and 9 minutes, Martin Eden has plenty of style, but ultimately lacks enough substance and  substance does, thereby leaving audiences feeling somewhat cold and wishing that they could have gotten know Martin a lot more profoundly during his later years. Martin begins the film as a human being to the audience, but ends up as a stranger to them.

      Alex (Cooper Raiff) has just started his freshman year at college and lives in a dorm with his roommate, Sam (Logan Miller). He suffers from homesickness, so he frequently calls his mother (Amy Landecker) as though they were close friends. One night, he attends a party at a fraternity called Shithouse where he meets and flirts with his RA, Maggie (Dylan Gelula). After drinking some wine and getting physically intimate with her in her dorm room, they converse with each other. He convinces her to come with him to retrieve her deceased pet turtle from a garbage bin and to give it a proper burial. Throughout the course of the night, they form a deep connection, or at least he thinks that they're connecting. She even opens up to him about her dysfunctional family. The next morning, she kicks him out of her room and then ghosts him after he sends her multiple messages on Instagram, but he refuses to be ignored.

      Writer/director Cooper Raiff has a knack for writing dialogue that sounds organic while avoiding schmaltz and melodrama. Alex and Maggie are both flawed characters which makes them all the more human and interesting. He's sweet, yet naive, emotionally immature, insecure and needy. She's emotionally immature, reckless and inconsiderate. Case in point: she has a fake ID and engages in underage drinking despite being an RA who's supposed to be a good role model. Raiff does a great job of bringing Alex and Maggie to life thereby allowing you to be fully immersed in their lives, want them to be happy and to end up together. Both characters have a lot to learn about life and relationships, and it's fascinating to watch them learn and grow as they navigate through their complicated set of emotions. It's also interesting to watch how the relationship between Alex and his mother evolves. She seems toxic at first, but at least she's accountable when it comes to her toxic behavior because she admits that it's unhealthy for her son to be calling her so often. He's lucky to have a mother who's capable of changing and doing what's right for his mental and emotional wellbeing. 

      Much like the films of Eric Rohmer and Richard Linklater, Shithouse isn't heavy on plot and more about capturing the feelings contained within the threadbare plot. As Hitchcock once observed, some films are a slice of life while others are a slice of cake. Shithouse is predominantly a slice-of-life, but it's also a slice-of-cake at times--it's basically a "life cake."  It's much more profound, funny and moving than the overrated, unfunny and pretentious Superbad and Booksmart. It's also slightly reminscent of some of John Hughes' classic coming-of-age movies and Rob Reiner's sweet, funny and underrated romantic dramedy, The Sure Thing. The comic relief doesn't rely on lowbrow humor with the exception of Alex's roommate shitting his pants after a drunk night and then cracks jokes about it during his stand-up comedy routine in front of his schoolmates. Does every frat movie have to have gross-out humor by default? At least Raiff doesn't include more of that kind of potty humor. Fortunately, the performances feel just as naturalistic as the screenplay with no one over-acting or under-acting. There's also just the right amount of nuance and exposition without narration or flashbacks, so Raiff avoids treating the audience like they're dumb. He trusts their emotions, imagination, intelligence for the most part, except for the last few minutes of the film that tie things up a little too neatly. He should be commended, though, for his use a symbolism, i.e. the burial of the turtle which is just as provocative as the symbolism in Harold and Maude when Harold and Maude transplanted the asmthatic tree in the forest. At a running time of 1 hour and 42 minutes, Shithouse is a genuinely engrossing, tender and wise slice-of-life.